Hollywood's most toxic feud

FOR 20 years she has been the silent young wife at his side. The South Korean orphan whom Woody Allen married even though she was the adopted daughter of his partner Mia Farrow and he had known her since she was 10.

Now Soon-Yi Previn, who deposed her mother in Allen's affections aged 21 - when he was 56 - has given her first interview to defend the man she married when she was 27. It does not make for comfortable reading.

Soon-Yi - who adopted two children of her own with the film director - describes Farrow, 73, as a "nasty, mean person" who abused her when she was a child, spanked her with a hairbrush and threatened to send her to an "insane asylum".

She also discusses falling in love with Allen - effectively her stepfather - and dismisses allegations he sexually abused her adopted half-sister Dylan, a claim made by Farrow during the brutal custody battle that followed the discovery of Allen's affair with Soon-Yi.

"What's happened to Woody is so upsetting, so unjust," says Previn, 47 - claiming that Farrow has "taken advantage of the #MeToo movement" and paraded her halfsister Dylan, 33, as a victim.

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She unleashes a stream of invective against the actress who raised her, claiming Farrow called her "moronic" and would hold her upside down "because she thought blood going to my head would make me smarter or something".

Asked if she has any positive recollections from their years together Soon-Yi insists: "I really can't come up with a pleasant memory."

After the interview, Dylan Farrow and her half-brother Ronan, 30, used social media to rebut Soon-Yi's statements.

Woody Allen (left) and his partner, actress Mia Farrow pose under an awning with their children (Image: The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Ronan, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who uncovered the sexual misconduct allegations against Harvey Weinstein and whose exposé triggered the #MeToo movement, describes her comments as "shameful".

But Soon-Yi, whose attack on her estranged adoptive mother is full of intimate details, insists she was never interested in "writing a 'Mommie Dearest'" - a reference to the film based on the book by Christina Crawford about growing up as the abused daughter of alcoholic actress Joan Crawford.

Insisting that "getting even" is not her motivation, she nonetheless told New York magazine she felt unable to sit by and let Farrow manipulate #MeToo to get payback against her ex-husband.

The interview has added fuel to the toxic feud between Allen and Farrow since 1992 when the Oscar-winning actress and star of Rosemary's Baby discovered nude photographs of Soon-Yi taken by the film director with whom she had been in a relationship for 13 years.

Soon-Yi "regrets" her adoptive mother found the pictures - "I think it would have been horrible for her" - but notes that she and Allen were "both consenting adults".

Woody Allen with his adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn at New York Knicks game (Image: NY Daily News via Getty Images)

She also admitted that marrying her step-father was a "huge betrayal" and there was "no justification" for it.

But she added: "Mia was so volatile. I understand she would be angry - don't get me wrong, she had every right to be. But she was like a sinkhole taking everything down with her."

Allen, who was present while Soon-Yi was being interviewed by his friend and admirer Daphne Merkin, suggests that he has been made a "pariah" because actors such as Colin Firth and Mira Sorvino have apologised for being in his films and he is being shunned by Hollywood.

He adds: "People think that I was Soon-Yi's father, that I raped and married my underaged, retarded daughter."

Indeed, Allen's relationship with his partner's daughter was once described as the affair that "broke every taboo" in the words of child psychiatrist Paulina Kernberg.

But according to Soon-Yi, her relationship with Farrow was pretty peculiar too.

She claims that their fraught relationship sprang from the moment Farrow, with camera in hand, picked out the supposed six-year-old at a Korean orphanage in May 1977 - Soon-Yi's actual age is unknown as she was found living out of rubbish bins in Seoul.

"I remember the second I laid eyes on her," says Soon-Yi. "There was a big excitement and hoopla around her. She came to me and threw her arms around me to give me a big hug. I'm standing there rigidly, thinking, 'Who is this woman and can she get her hands off of me?' She didn't ring true or sincere."

This development is presented as the continuation of a troubled childhood which had begun when Soon-Yi ran away from her impoverished South Korean home.

She describes how she once ate a bar of soap out of desperation before she was admitted to the orphanage run by nuns.

However she claims that trouble with her new mother began before they left South Korea when "she kind of just threw me in" to a bath, despite the fact she had never before taken one by herself.

She claims that from the beginning she and Farrow were like "oil and water" and that "Mia wasn't maternal to me from the get-go".

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When Soon-Yi went to live with Farrow and her then husband, conductor Andre Previn, and their blended family in England - including the couple's three biological children - she claims that she and her siblings were treated like "domestics", that "Mia always valued intelligence and also looks, blonde hair and blue eyes" and that her adoptive parents had "bonechilling tempers".

She recalls having alphabet wooden blocks thrown at her "if I didn't get them right", being slapped across the face and having a porcelain rabbit hurled at her by Farrow.

It was in 1979, following the couple's divorce, that Farrow uprooted her extended brood to New York where a new man entered their lives: Woody Allen.

Although Soon-Yi did not like the interloper initially, by the time she was 16 they were attending basketball games together.

She says their affair began in 1991 following a discussion about The Seventh Seal, an art film directed by Ingmar Bergman.

She says their affair began in 1991 following a discussion about The Seventh Seal (Image: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)

"We chatted about it and I must have been impressive because he kissed me and I think that started it," she says.

"We were like two magnets, very attracted to each other." She claims that she did not see him as a father figure because he was not married to Farrow and did not live with the family.

But Ronan and Dylan, and six of their siblings, see things very differently. They said in a statement: "We love and stand by our mum, who has always been a caring and giving parent.

"None of us ever witnessed anything other than compassionate treatment in our home, which is why the courts granted sole custody to our mother of all her children.

"We reject any effort to deflect from Dylan's allegation by trying to vilify our mum. While we would rather not have to speak publicly about this painful time in our lives we also couldn't be silent as she is once again unfairly attacked."